Investigating the Human Nature of Art Making
Studying human nature is an amazing thing. Researching your own nature is, however, an altogether different story.
After years of teaching art and developing progressive secondary curricula, I discovered a gap within myself. As a public school teacher and masters student in art education, I have been exposed to socio-cultural theories and art pedagogies that were successfully implemented into a solid public school arts program. Yet, spiritually and artistically, I felt cut off within myself. Little by little the literature and theories I interacted with seemed to overshadow whole person of mind, body and spirit. While working on a book project with scholars in the fields of cultural studies and its critical theory/political economy counterparts, I began to recognize that these cultural perspectives no longer resonated with me as anthropologically sound. First I felt it biased a view that all cultural experience is regulated through contested differences of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Second, this extreme rational and materialistic bias overlooks the holistic nature of individual experience. It diminishes the a.) interdependence of nature and humanity, b.) the psycho-emotional/ spiritual aspects of survival, and c.) the existential meaning-making processes in daily life. Furthermore I recognized that social reconstructivist pedagogy can only work for social change when individuals commit to personal responsiblity. This includes their ones actions and attitudes towards themselves and others. Real sustainable global change can only happen through inner revolutions; the kind that comes through humility and grace. Art educators can facilitate such processes by establishing spaces that ground socio-political issues and action within a pedagogy of authentic self-inquiry. This vision returns learners back to the practice of self-processing as a mode of spiritual and moral development.
In response to my internal conflicts with cultural studies, I took a huge academic risk and philosophically shifted my research from social issues of teen identity and visual culture, to a more authentic strand of arts-based research. This allowed for a greater interaction with my own identity as a working artist and opened a space to investigate the ways human beings with artistic temperments,(some people call these people artists) intuitively, emotionally, and expressively come to know and interact with the worId.
After many confusing graduate years of searching for an authentic resonating investigative space, I returned to the study of the painting process. My new research question became: How does art function in human experience as a transformative practice of healing and wholeness? To research this problem, I considered moving into ethnographic studies utilizing narrative inquiry with various local artists. However, in honesty, I was motivated by a more personal expereince and dilema- to discover how painting could actually contribute to my own need for emotional healing and wholeness. I knew that to really grasp these internal dynamics, designing a dual self-inquiry between a participant artist and myself would allow for rich discussions and provide deeper insights into the experiences that have potentials to bring mental, emotional and spiritual transformation.
I soon discovered Rita Irwin's (University of British Columbia) Artography methodology. Her emphasis upon self-inquiry as an investigation of the spaces of identity as artist, researcher and teacher provided the structure I needed to embark upon this incredible (and scary!) journey.
This blog site is dedicated to the documentation of this self-inquiry project.
After years of teaching art and developing progressive secondary curricula, I discovered a gap within myself. As a public school teacher and masters student in art education, I have been exposed to socio-cultural theories and art pedagogies that were successfully implemented into a solid public school arts program. Yet, spiritually and artistically, I felt cut off within myself. Little by little the literature and theories I interacted with seemed to overshadow whole person of mind, body and spirit. While working on a book project with scholars in the fields of cultural studies and its critical theory/political economy counterparts, I began to recognize that these cultural perspectives no longer resonated with me as anthropologically sound. First I felt it biased a view that all cultural experience is regulated through contested differences of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Second, this extreme rational and materialistic bias overlooks the holistic nature of individual experience. It diminishes the a.) interdependence of nature and humanity, b.) the psycho-emotional/ spiritual aspects of survival, and c.) the existential meaning-making processes in daily life. Furthermore I recognized that social reconstructivist pedagogy can only work for social change when individuals commit to personal responsiblity. This includes their ones actions and attitudes towards themselves and others. Real sustainable global change can only happen through inner revolutions; the kind that comes through humility and grace. Art educators can facilitate such processes by establishing spaces that ground socio-political issues and action within a pedagogy of authentic self-inquiry. This vision returns learners back to the practice of self-processing as a mode of spiritual and moral development.
In response to my internal conflicts with cultural studies, I took a huge academic risk and philosophically shifted my research from social issues of teen identity and visual culture, to a more authentic strand of arts-based research. This allowed for a greater interaction with my own identity as a working artist and opened a space to investigate the ways human beings with artistic temperments,(some people call these people artists) intuitively, emotionally, and expressively come to know and interact with the worId.
After many confusing graduate years of searching for an authentic resonating investigative space, I returned to the study of the painting process. My new research question became: How does art function in human experience as a transformative practice of healing and wholeness? To research this problem, I considered moving into ethnographic studies utilizing narrative inquiry with various local artists. However, in honesty, I was motivated by a more personal expereince and dilema- to discover how painting could actually contribute to my own need for emotional healing and wholeness. I knew that to really grasp these internal dynamics, designing a dual self-inquiry between a participant artist and myself would allow for rich discussions and provide deeper insights into the experiences that have potentials to bring mental, emotional and spiritual transformation.
I soon discovered Rita Irwin's (University of British Columbia) Artography methodology. Her emphasis upon self-inquiry as an investigation of the spaces of identity as artist, researcher and teacher provided the structure I needed to embark upon this incredible (and scary!) journey.
This blog site is dedicated to the documentation of this self-inquiry project.
posted by Administrator: Artshaman at 2:52 PM
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